Naomi Klein used Hamas' barbaric October 7 slaughter as a weapon against Israel

Sent to The Guardian on October 9, 2024

Dear Editor:

Reading Naomi Klein's perversely bizarre essay, "How Israel has made trauma a weapon of war," reminds me of the way, decades ago, a friend opened my eyes to the reason behind the French government's behavior with is observation that "France will never forgive the United States for saving it in World War II." In a similar vein, it's clear that many Europeans resent Israel because it reminds them of Europe's effective complicity in the Holocaust.

Rather than exploiting the atrocities committed by Hamas - along with Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Fatah (yes, the same Fatah led by the supposedly "moderate" Mahmoud Abbas), other terror groups and thousands of "ordinary Gaza civilians," with financial support training provided by Iran and Qatar, Israel was reluctant to distribute graphic video evidence of the slaughter and heavily censored the worst atrocities.

The destruction in both Gaza and Lebanon is not something Israel ever wanted; it is the inevitable result of the "dead baby strategy" perfected by Hamas, using civilians as human shields and making it impossible to defend against them without civilians getting harmed. In many of the cities and towns the Israeli army entered, it found rockets, weapons, ammunition or entrances into terror tunnels in virtually every home, hospital, school and mosque it entered. With so many of those places booby trapped, Israel had a choice of destroying them or having their young soldiers blown to bits when they entered.

Despite that dead baby strategy, the proportion of civilian casualties in Gaza has been amazingly low, with the ration of non-combatant to terrorist deaths being about 1/9 of the norm recognized by the United Nations Security Council. Israel should be praised rather than damned.

Among the perversities in Klein's essay are multiple inversions of reality.

She falsely refers to "stateless Palestinians" - doesn't the United Nations now accept "Palestine" as a state? It's not, but the Israel-haters love to have it both ways - as "living under prolonged Israeli siege, illegal occupation and apartheid." This despite the way Israel has actually been transferring massive amounts of humanitarian aid to Gaza for many years, completely left Gaza nineteen years ago, and the only apartheid in the area is that practices by the Palestinian Arabs, with even selling property to Jews is a capital crime.

She falsely calls Israel a colonial power, when the Jews are the indigenous people in the Land of Israel while Arabs first came to the area as, in current terminology, colonial occupiers during the Muslim conquests during the early days of Islam, thousands of years after King Solomon built the First (Jewish) Temple on the Temple Mount, precisely where the Muslims built the Al Aqsa Mosque.

Worst of all, there is not even a hint in the article that Israelis and the Israeli government would all be much happier if the Palestinian Arabs had never perpetrated October 7, do not want war, and if the Palestinian Arabs along with Iran and its terror proxies would stop attacking Israel. If they did that, there would be peace and prosperity for all.

Ironically, if the devastation Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran have brought to Gaza and Lebanon convince the people there to live in peace, it can bring a better future for all. Those who long for peace and want a better future for the Palestinian Arabs and Lebanese should be strongly supporting Israel and pray that Israel succeeds in effectively destroying both Hamas and Hezbollah.

Unfortunately, Naomi Klein does not seem to be in that category.

Sincerely,

Alan Stein

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